The seriousness of depression, anxiety, and other mental health issues are increasingly coming into focus. With more media attention, more shows incorporating mental health as a theme, and more people coming forward with their struggles with mental health, far more people than ever before are starting to see how widespread the issue is. More than that, people are starting to see how mental health problems aren’t something that only a small number of people will deal with. They can happen to anyone.

Since we can all suffer from depression, it’s important we all take the steps necessary to reduce our risk as individuals. Thankfully, a lot of these steps are common sense, even if they can be tough to follow at times. Here are four ways to fight off the blues:

1. Regular Exercise

Get out for that jog in the morning. It can make all the difference. Research has shown that exercise is a great way not just to avoid depression but to actually feel good. Not only do you look better (a nice bonus), but exercise releases hormones that make you feel happier. So stop eyeing those dumbbells in the corner suspiciously and get to work lifting again.

2. Better Diet

Perhaps just as important to good mental and physical health is eating right. A good diet keeps your body healthier, which helps avoid depression. It also releases more of those positive hormones, helps with body image issues, and gives you the energy to pursue your health goals and other important goals in your life.

3. Sleeping Right

Sleep Night Therapy has pointed out that sleep has a lot to do with how we feel. We all know that a bad night’s sleep can lead to a grumpy day. Now magnify that over months and years of never getting enough sleep. You may think day-to-day you’re doing fine, but it is influencing your mood, your energy, and your health on every level. Make a point of getting those 7 to 9 hours of sleep every night. If you are struggling with that, see a sleep therapist.

4. Reduce Stress

Here’s another major cause of depression. You need to stress less. Sure, easier said than done, but to avoid the risks of depression, reduce stress anywhere you can in your life. Get more rest so you can get up earlier and not rush about. Try to avoid delaying major projects so you don’t rush them at the end. And avoid those who add more stress to your life.

The above tips are perhaps obvious, and they are by no means certain to keep serious depression or other mental illness at bay, but they are all important aspects of our lives we really must pay more attention to.

We live in a stress-filled world that doesn’t allow for a lot of sleep. It also doesn’t make it easy to keep up with other healthy practices like exercise and proper diet. For all that, we have to make these things our priority because they don’t just keep our bodies healthy, they keep our minds healthy as well.

We’re all afraid of something. While most of us are satisfied fearing everything in proportion and fearing “normal” things like death, the dark, and spiders, that’s not the case for everyone. In fact, many people have incredibly interesting fears, which are often at the same time quite tragic, since they can keep people from living their lives to the fullest.

There is, for instance, ablutophobia, which is the fear of cleaning oneself or taking a bath. The implications of such a fear are obvious. To struggle with the simple act of doing daily ablutions (the Latin word for the act of washing, which is where the -phobia term comes from), could leave people embarrassed and struggling to succeed in simply getting jobs or making friends.

Another incredible phobia is amaxophobia. “Amaxo” in Greek means “vehicle,” and so, amaxophobia is the fear of riding in a car.

Unlike ablutophobia, many can probably sympathize with those who suffer from amaxophobia. Cars can be scary things, after all. There are car accidents to worry about, pollution, carbon monoxide. There’s also the less obvious but just as deadly possibility of car defects, and that truly is a scary thought to consider.

That thought, though, may hold the key to understanding how the phobia develops. With the idea of mechanical defects, we can immediately understand the horror of the loss of control. We’ve all seen movies in which someone is in a car where the breaks down work. What if the car won’t accelerate? Or won’t stop accelerating?

Such thoughts truly as terrifying, and those who suffer from amaxophobia struggling with them nonstop. It is this powerlessness that terrifies. Crucially, amaxophobia revolves around being a passenger. As a passenger, a person is required to trust completely not just in the car or in other drivers, but in a personal sense, in the one driving the specific car they are in. That is simply a step too far for such people, and any attempt to ride as a passenger leads to great fits of anxiety or worse.

The results of amaxophobia are no less than those for ablutophobia. In countries like America, there are often no other ways to get around than by car. Should such a person life in such an area, they would effectively be marooned at their home, unable to get further than the edge of their neighborhood. In such a situation, work, shopping, and socializing would become almost impossible. The person is trapped.

It is important to remember that phobias are not due to choice. They are the result of previous traumas or else, sometimes, chemical issues in the brain. The person, then, who suffers from ablutophobia, amaxophobia, or some other phobia, has no real choice in the matter.

Thankfully, there are methods of treatment that help people overcome at least partially these handicaps. All the same, they deserve our sympathy, our concern, and our help when we can give it.

This is my first post on what I hope to make a regular series: car recalls.

I know this information is available elsewhere. I’ll be using cars.com for this post, for instance, and you could just go there. But I think this sort of information is important enough to spread it around. And since I know a few people who will read this and would never think to go to a place like cars.com, I think it’s a useful service.

I’m passionate about this because I had a vehicle defect issue in the past. The seat belts weren’t installed properly, and it very nearly led to a serious problem. I was with my wife, and we stopped suddenly and the seat belt on her side of the car started to come apart. Thankfully, we weren’t going very fast and we were able to sort of slide to a stop instead of breaking hard or stopping instantly in an accident. Still, it was scary. And I still have nightmares about what might have happened.

So, the recalls:

There’s been a recall on the 2004-2006 Mitsubishi Lancer for an airbag problem. If you’ve got a Lancer from those years, make sure to get that checked out.

Lexus HS 250h sedans from 2010 also have a problem. The transaxle assembly can lead to parts of your car wearing down.

Several different versions of a very popular car, the Porsche Cayenne, from 2003-2006, are being recalled because of a fuel filter problem that can lead to fuel leaking out. That could actually lead to a fire, so get your Porsche in right away, folks.

Finally, my last recall notice for this first post, the Volkswagen Touareg, years 2004-2007: there’s a recall out for the same reason as the Porsche Cayenne directly above. This stuff is serious, so don’t put this off.

Trust me, you may not think these recalls are important and that nothing can happen to your good, dependable vehicle, but you’d be wrong. I’m not the only one to experience the results of a car that came broken. There are whole areas of law dedicated to suing car companies that don’t recall these things fast enough.

And keep in mind, any recall means someone else complained about it—and either sued or threatened to sue—loud enough that the car company felt it was in their interest to recall.

If the message of a recall is getting to you from me, who got it from cars.com, who got it from the manufacturers, there’s already been serious enough problems with your type of car that very serious people are willing to lose money fixing the problem for free.

Yeah, and it’s free to get these things fixed. So, you really have no excuse. Otherwise, you may end up with a problem like I had. And you may need one of those lawyers.

Most state laws refer to child custody decisions as being in the “best interests of the child” but this may be interpreted differently in each situation, and each case is unique. In Arizona, family courts take into consideration many factors to determine where the child’s best chance of a balanced life lies.

The court considers the preferences of the parents as well as the child, and evaluates the relationship between child and parent as well as siblings (if any) and significant others such as grandparents. It will also look into the current educational and community situation of the child to determine if it would be healthier for the child to maintain the status quo or to allow the child to be placed in a new situation. Another important factor would be the age, mental state, and physical health of the child.

An Arizona family court judge is just as likely to award sole custody as well as joint custody depending on the circumstances, and to award sole custody regardless of the parent’s gender if it is in the best interest of the child. Historically, family courts tended to favor awarding physical custody to the mother for very young children when the parents cannot reach an agreement on their own, but this is not supposed to be the case any longer. The court will also decide on a visitation schedule for the non-custodial parent.

The parents are encouraged propose a jointly-prepared parenting plan subject to the court’s approval. This includes a custodial schedule, plans for education, religion, and health as well as plans for vacations and holidays. Unless there is a case of domestic violence or false allegations of such, or the judge discerns a level of coercion or duress in the custody agreement, such parenting plans are considered favorably as long as it conforms to the law.

After noticing bruising on their grandmother, two North Texas women decided to hide a camera in her room at a nursing facility. Camera footage revealed that their grandmother’s primary caretaker was verbally and physically abusive. Instead of helping the resident out of her bed gently, the caretaker would yank the 98-year-old woman up by her arm. Daily dressing and undressing proved to be a constant battle between the resident and the caretaker. The caretaker didn’t display gentleness while changing the resident’s clothes and was seen slapping and taunting her multiple times.

Despite their compelling video evidence, the family couldn’t do much to take the nurse’s certification away. Apparently this is one of many instances where nursing home residents suffer at the hand of unpunished facility employees. A study of reported incidents shows that abuse occurs regularly in one third of all United States nursing homes. Bed sores, fractures, dehydration, malnutrition, theft, gangrene, septic shock, infection, are all common ailments that neglected nursing home residents suffer from. A reprehensible practice called “double diapering” has landed some nursing home facilities on probation. Attendants will put two diapers on a resident so that they don’t have to take the resident to that bathroom as often.

A report indicates that the amount of nursing homes that have been cited for violations has increased yearly since 1996. Some people credit stringent rules for citing as the reason for this rise in violations. Facilities are legally required to report incidents, sometimes trivial in nature, as abuse. However, many incidents of abuse in nursing facilities are much more serious in nature. Since elderly residents require heightened supervision and care, a mistake like switching medications or not meeting dietary needs can have grave consequences.

It is an unfortunate fact that when children are a factor in divorce, child support issues become a bone of contention, especially if the divorce is dissentious. As it is with child custody, the concern of the courts is to look out for the best interests of children of divorce, and to protect their rights to financial maintenance by their parents.

The laws governing child support in Texas is embodied in Title 5 Subtitle B Chapter 154 of the Texas Family Code. In it, the laws are very specific on what the courts may and may not order based on the circumstances. It is possible that both parents will be assigned a certain amount of child support in cases when neither parent has physical conservatorship (which is what they call custody in Texas). In most cases, however, the parent who is the physical conservator is the one who will receive child support payments from the non-conservator parent.

There are many possible scenarios described under Chapter 154, but perhaps what would be an important point to know is that the failure of one parent to pay regularly court-ordered child support may be considered a quasi-criminal offense under Texas Penal Code §25.05 if that parent does so even if he or she has the financial capability to make payments. The penalty for this (considered contempt of court) can be as much as 180 days imprisonment each time the case is brought before the Texas Child Support Division as well as $500 in fines. According to the website of the BB Law Group PLLC, the non-paying parent may also risk losing state-issued licenses including professional, driver’s, business and recreational.

If you live in Texas and have been having difficulty in getting your spouse to pay child support regularly even though there is a financial capacity for it, consult with a lawyer in the area about your legal options. Your child or children should not have to suffer from your spouse’s refusal to fulfill legal and familial obligations.

If you have ever watched an episode of the tv show ER, you will know that it is a scene of much drama and tension. But while the award winning show focused primarily on the lives and personalities of the medical personnel, the stars of the show in a real emergency room are the patients, with the medical personnel acting as supporting characters. In real life, however, the stars of the drama don’t always come out triumphant in the end, and in some cases it is due to preventable emergency room errors.

It is a fact that the medical personnel in an emergency room need to be on their toes and to make quick literally life-or-death decisions for their patients. In most cases this can save a person’s life, but when in some instances because of carelessness or negligence, errors are made that can adversely affect a patient’s life, sometimes permanently. For example, a patient dies of a ruptured appendix an hour after a busy ER doctor sends her home with a prescription for antacid for her belly ache. This is a case of emergency room error that may land the ER doctor in court for medical malpractice.

Some of the most common human errors that occur in a hospital emergency room include:

Anesthesia errors

Delayed treatment

Medication or dosage error

Failure to diagnose

Incorrect diagnosis

Incorrect treatment method

This happens more often than it should, notwithstanding the effects of stress and time-constraints often prevailing in an emergency room. Patients have a right to a standard of care from medical practitioners, and there is no excuse for sloppy work. If you or someone you know suffered injury or death due to emergency room errors, you have a right to pursue compensation from the person or entity responsible for the medical mistake in question.

In response to the increasing trend of food products that have caffeine added into them, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is holding an investigation into the effects of caffeine, especially on children and adolescents.

The announcement comes alongside the release of a new gum from Wrigley that features caffeine as an additive. One piece of the gum has the caffeine content of half a cup of coffee. After discussions with the administration, Wrigley today announced that it will cease selling the caffeinated gum pending the results of the FDA investigation.

The concern is that these caffeinated food products are often marketed to children, who should not have stimulants in their diet. Too much caffeine can cause an increased heart rate or arrhythmia.

Officials at the FDA applaud Wrigley for taking interest in public health. Not much is yet known about the effects of prolonged caffeine exposure in children, so the administration is hoping other producers of caffeinated foods will make similar decisions as it moves towards enacting appropriate regulations.

Raytheon Company, the largest employer in El Segundo, is moving its corporate headquarters to McKinney, Texas. The move comes as a part of reorganization efforts that have become the norm for defense contractors in response to the United States’ reduced defense budget.

A spokesman for the company says that the move will help the company be closer to its customers and streamline its efforts.

Between 6,000 and 7,000 people work at the El Segundo office, where the company makes RADAR sensors for heavy craft such as satellites, fighter jets, and ships.

It is becoming increasingly common for large corporations to move their operations from California to other parts of the United States. In this case, real estate in Texas is much cheaper and the laws are much friendlier to the operation of a business.

If you slip and fall in front of your neighbor’s house because of some oil he spilled on the sidewalk, is he liable? Yes, he is.

Premises liability can be a complex issue, but not in the above situation. Under premise liability law, your neighbor is responsible for keeping the sidewalk in front of his house clear and safe for the public. Your neighbor must have known the oil was potentially dangerous to the public, failed to clean up the oil (easily done with a piece of newspaper) or provide some type of warning about it to you or any passersby. If you sustained serious injury in your slip and fall, you can claim for compensation from your neighbor (or his insurance company) based on premise liability laws.

Premise liability statutes differ from state to state, but there are some general definitions that you should be aware of. This will help you identify when a premise liability claim can be made, and to ensure that you are never on the wrong end of a personal injury claim.

First of all, premise liability accrues to the person who is in possession of a physical property such as a lot, building, house, apartment, or establishment. A person is said to possess the premises when that person occupies and/or controls it. For example, a homeowner occupies a house and has control over what happens within and around the house. If a person rents an apartment but does not live in it, he or she is still said to be in control of it while the lease holds. A person does not necessarily have to own the premises to be in possession.

The second consideration in premises liability law is the nature of the relationship between the plaintiff and the defendant in terms of the plaintiff’s presence on the premises at the time of the incident. There are three types of relationships under premises liability: invitee, licensee and trespasser. The first two categories of people may be considered to have a “legitimate” presence on the premises, and to whom the possessor owes a reasonable duty of care, which if absent and results in injury renders the possessor liable. For example, if Joe invites Linda to his house and a rotting tree branch in the backyard falls on her head, Joe may be liable for Linda’s injuries.

The third category of person may be considered an “illegitimate” presence on the premises, or one who has no right to be there in the first place. For example, if Nathan who lives behind Joe’s property decides to take a shortcut to his house by going through Joe’s backyard without Joe’s knowledge or invitation, and that same branch fell on his head, Joe might not be held liable for Nathan’s injuries.